Connectivity for all Canadians
Canadian airports are well-connected, but there are gaps.
Federal air transportation agreements with governments around the world give airlines the right to fly between Canada and more than 125 countries.
Every international route connects both people and goods
These flights are gateways for passengers, but also for goods. An international airport is an economic gateway — a trade corridor with scheduled departures. The flight carrying a business traveller to Asia is also carrying seafood, pharmaceuticals and urgent shipments in the hold beneath. Globally, more than half of all air cargo is carried this way.
Open a new route and passengers and cargo begin moving. Lose a route and both stop. Canada’s airports are constantly working with airlines to establish new routes and service to benefit local passengers, our economy, and our connection to trade partners and international allies.
Canada’s connectivity advantages
Canada’s geographic position – between Europe, Asia and the Americas – is an advantage for capturing connecting traffic, which benefits Canadian travellers and trade. Toronto Pearson is one of North America’s best-connected airports for international flights, and if it counted as a port of entry to the United States, it would be the fourth largest.
But over the past two decades, Canada’s airports and the federal government have worked to make connecting through a Canadian airport even more of an advantage: fewer steps, shorter connection times and airports that airlines want to use.
We have built four main advantages:
- You’re only screened once. One Stop Security means Canada recognises the aviation security standards of other countries, so passengers arriving to connect do not have to go through screening again.
- Your bags connect, too. International connections to Domestic let a traveller arrive on an international flight and transfer to a domestic one without stopping to collect luggage at customs, and without being rescreened when arriving from a One Stop Security country.
- You can connect in Canada without formally entering. International to International lets a traveller connect from one international flight direct to another without clearing Canadian customs.
- You clear the U.S. border before you board. At nine Canadian airports, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers inspect travellers on United States-bound flights before departure. Upon arrival in the United States, those travellers are considered domestic arrivals and leave the airport or go straight to a connection without stopping to clear customs.
The Canadian connecting experience already matches and in ways beats global peers. But there is more work to be done – digitisation is where the next gains will be found.
Canada’s biggest connectivity gaps are regional
Seventy per cent of Canadian air travel moves through Canada’s four largest airports. But air service is a lifeline for hundreds of remote and regional communities. Residents use it to access health care, education, business and trade, keeping them connected to the rest of the country.
But regional service’s recovery from pandemic losses and labour shortages has been uneven. Flight frequencies at Canada’s regional airports remain at just 64 per cent of 2014 levels. On some routes, airlines have economised on labour and equipment costs by flying larger aircraft fewer times a day to serve regional markets. This leaves travellers with fewer options or extra costs when taking time-sensitive business trips, family visits and medical appointments, and regional airports increasingly have to manage and invest to accommodate much larger aircraft and peak passenger volumes, without necessarily any more revenue.
Canada has a small, dispersed population spread across a vast geography. This is a genuine challenge, and service to smaller communities is where Canada has the most ground to make up. Airports know the value of regional connectivity, and are the anchors that fully connect our wide range of communities to Canada and on to the world.
A single daily flight within Canada can support 210 jobs and $41 million in economic output.
Why Canada’s regional connectivity gaps persist
Air service in Canada is shaped almost entirely by market forces, with limited direct government support.
Other countries have tools that Canada has not yet adopted. For example, the U.S. Essential Air Service provides subsidies and other supports that guarantee a minimum level of connectivity between regional airports and larger hubs.
Since the mid-1990s, the United States has invested 8.5 times more per person in airport infrastructure than Canada has.
Four steps to close Canada’s regional connectivity gaps
- Investment in regional airport infrastructure, specifically the terminals, runways and equipment that make service possible in the first place, especially as aircraft and patterns change significantly. Canada’s small and medium airports have $19 billion in infrastructure projects ahead that can deliver more growth and efficiency in regional connectivity with new federal partnership.
- A federal Regional Air Connectivity Program aimed at keeping and restoring air network service to communities that have lost it.
- Support for the aviation labour force, including pilots, maintenance engineers, firefighters and controllers, in the places that struggle hardest to recruit them.
- Streamlined regulations to ease the compliance cost carried by small airports with small teams.
There is no single fix or half-step. Our connectivity research makes clear that these four steps need to be taken together to work.” New Report: Regional Air Service Crucial to Canada’s Economic Future, Connectivity and Way of Life – Canadian Airports Council.